I cannot imagine this is a unique post but I'm just banging my head getting the fundamentals correct for when to make the players roll for Perception or Investigation checks.
I've read Players and DMG multiple times on Wisdom vs. Intelligence. I've checked out videos on this topic but what I've seen pretty much regurgitate Players or DMG. It's just not clear to me what the trigger would be either from a player's standpoint to a situation I can deduce which proper ability check to make.
I'm just not consistent and as the DM I want to be consistent on what check, the proper check, I'm asking my players to do and not have them confused asking "But last time with situation X you had us roll Perception but new in a similar Situation Y you want Investigation???"
So I'm looking for some help or feedback on to you make the determination of Perception vs Investigation checks. Again, I've read Players and DMG and it's not getting through to me, by no fault of the books, it just me who trying to get more concrete examples or understanding how to properly identify and request the proper skill check.
Yes, DM Experience is key and I'm sure it will all come to me during game session 42 but my compulsion to get the rules right is compelling me that I'm not getting it and I need some DM assistance.
I use Passive Perception to determine if a character "happens to notice" something as they go about their business. Example, if a character is walking down a hallway, I use their Passive Perception to see if they notice the trap.
Along the same lines, if the character asks, "Do I notice anything?" I ask for a Perception roll. Example, the character is walking down the hallway and says, "I'm keeping an eye out for traps", I ask for a Perception roll to see if the spot the trap.
If the character says, "I'm looking for...", then I ask for Investigation roll. Example, the character is walking down the hallway and says, "I'm searching for traps", I ask for Investigation roll to see if they find the trap.
In general I use Perception as "oh! I spotted/heard something!" and Investigation as "Aha! Found it!"
There’s actually a pretty big... 60+ post thread. Chronically detailing our perception vs investigation. Passively. Actively. How it’s RAW, how people home brew it, etc.
I use Passive Perception to determine if a character "happens to notice" something as they go about their business. Example, if a character is walking down a hallway, I use their Passive Perception to see if they notice the trap.
Along the same lines, if the character asks, "Do I notice anything?" I ask for a Perception roll. Example, the character is walking down the hallway and says, "I'm keeping an eye out for traps", I ask for a Perception roll to see if the spot the trap.
If the character says, "I'm looking for...", then I ask for Investigation roll. Example, the character is walking down the hallway and says, "I'm searching for traps", I ask for Investigation roll to see if they find the trap.
In general I use Perception as "oh! I spotted/heard something!" and Investigation as "Aha! Found it!"
This is not entirely correct.
perception = general.
investigation = specific.
thats how it all boils down in the end.
the searching for traps would be investigation. Keeping an eye out for traps. Also investigation.
”keeping an eye out for anything weird” perception. Then, with that perception, you might notice arrow holes in one wall, dried blood on the floor etc, which leads you to believe there is a trap.
perception doesn’t find a secret door. Perception finds walls where air comes through, or you can see light, or that sound different when you knock on them, etc. and then Investigation determines its a secret door and not just the work of a bad carpenter/construction worker/mason.
2 things. First is something I think that goes overlooked. If you open up a character sheet on dndbeyond and go to your skill list, click on a skill and it gives good detailed explanation of each skill.
second, here is how I determine the difference between the two. Investigation is getting up close and personal, searching a sock drawer, reaching into a hole in a wall, looking through books on a shelf, looting a dead body, going through papers on a desk.
perception is a test of the senses. - As you bite into the pie, make a perception check...you get a little taste of iron. - Can I hear anyone on the other side of the door? Make a perception check. - You see several shadowy figures moving through the fog, make a perception check. They appear humanoid in nature but you catch a glimpse of two red glowing eyes quickly look in your direction.
I believe that it's been nigh impossible for people to figure out how these are intended to be used, based on RAW, because RAW itself uses them inconsistently, and the skill checks called for in published modules just make the issue worse.
You are probably better off figuring out what specific cases it makes sense to use each skill in your game, use those, and use them consistently. In the end, so long as the rules are reasonable, agreed upon, known to everyone, give you results you want, and are consistent - you're good.
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
"Detecting a Secret Door. Use the characters’ passive Wisdom (Perception) scores to determine whether anyone in the party notices a secret door without actively searching for it. Characters can also find a secret door by actively searching the location where the door is hidden and succeeding on a Wisdom (Perception) check."
"Detecting a Secret Door. Use the characters’ passive Wisdom (Perception) scores to determine whether anyone in the party notices a secret door without actively searching for it. Characters can also find a secret door by actively searching the location where the door is hidden and succeeding on a Wisdom (Perception) check."
“perception <edit> *shouldn’t* find a secret door”
hows that for you then?
cause, to Vedexent’s point. There’s inconsistencies between modules, PhB, DMG, and SA, regarding what it does and does not do for perception and investigation both.
in general I find it best and most understandable to keep it simple:
perception is general
investigation is specific
otherwise, you end up invalidating one for the other at some point.
much like when people misuse acrobatics in athletics situations.
example from PhB:
Perception. Your Wisdom (Perception) check lets you spot, hear, or otherwise detect the presence of something. It measures your general awareness of your surroundings and the keenness of your Senses. For example, you might try to hear a conversation through a closed door, eavesdrop under an open window, or hear Monsters moving stealthily in the Forest. Or you might try to spot things that are obscured or easy to miss, whether they are orcs lying in Ambushon a road, thugs Hiding in the shadows of an alley, or candlelight under a closed Secret door.
you don’t see the secret door. You see the candlelight under it.
This is the way I run it and makes the most sense to me:
Perception is your physical senses, how sharp your sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch are. Perception checks will provide physical details, but will not tell you what anything means, that will depend on whether or not you've perceived something similar before or if you have some other knowledge. High perception characters have honed and sharpened senses.
Investigation is your mental ability to deduce information from clues. It does not help you physically notice anything, but once you do notice something Investigation will help you work out what something is, how something works, or if there is a hidden meaning behind something. This is also why it is used in research rolls, because it helps you glean meaning from various sources and put together a coherent and holistic picture of the information. It is also the skill to Sherlock Holmes a crime scene and figure out what happened. This might make it overlap just a little with Survival in that it helps you track someone, but I wouldn't think it would allow the same kind of speed.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
So perception will let you notice a seam in the wall, a wire hidden in the mechanism of a doorknob, and the differences in the patterns in the background of a painting, but Investigation will tell you that it's a hidden door, a poison dart trap, or a hidden code implanted by the painter.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I've heard tons of people say that official adventures and the rules are inconsistent with finding secret doors. (I'm just going to focus on this one aspect of the perception vs investigation debate for simplicity.) But here's the thing... they ARE consistent. If you have the app and own all the books, feel free to deny this, but it's pretty easy to find every instance of "secret door" like I just did. There is ONE instance of using investigation to find a secret door, and it is included as an additional way to find a secret door that is already called out as a perception find. (HoDQ, Hunting Lodge, allows to find the door when investigating the tapestries closely in addition to the perception to find it) There are secret doors that can only be found by performing other steps. A magic map is needed in OotA, for one, but there are only 3 instances of this type thing across all the official adventures.
There is, in fact, a situation where candlelight is seen under a secret door in CoS. Because of that candlelight, it says no perception roll is needed to find it. The characters just see it straight up, as is appropriate. The "candlelight under the door" example from the skill description is a flavor description to help understand how it might be seen. I don't see that as an "inconsistency" because it's more for helping a player understand how skills interact with the world, whereas the DMG and all the modules are for laying out the rules for the DM. (And I realize that adventures aren't rulebooks, but I look to them for consistencies if I need to.)
I know this doesn't necessarily address the original question, but there are consistencies in how the two skills are used in the 5e official content if you actually look. (Btw, the same applies to traps, as I had previously searched every instance of spotting traps for a passive perception thread.)
Secret doors are only one use case. I'm not saying there aren't use cases where the skills are used consistently. I'm saying that the Character skills are not used consistently over all use cases. In some cases they seem to "mean" one thing, and "mean" other things in other cases.
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Based on published examples, investigation is almost useless, so it may be preferable to just come up with your own house rules for what it means. A decent rule of thumb would be "Could a dog figure this out?". If the answer is 'yes', it's perception, 'no', it's investigation.
In the case of a secret door, that sounds like perception to know the door is there, but investigation to figure out how to open it.
Secret doors are just one example (as I said) but the same thing applies to traps and other "things to find". I was sticking to investigation and perception vs skills overall per the OP's request of concrete examples. The DMG states the rules for the most common uses of these two skills, the adventures give uses of those skills in practice. They are pretty universal in that perception=spotting a trap or door, with a follow-up investigation roll to find out how to disarm/open it. Secret compartment in a wall? Perception. Secret compartment in a desk? Investigation. Secret compartment behind a painting? Investigation. (All examples from published adventures, all consistent with the DMG.)
Based on published examples, investigation is almost useless, so it may be preferable to just come up with your own house rules for what it means. A decent rule of thumb would be "Could a dog figure this out?". If the answer is 'yes', it's perception, 'no', it's investigation.
I'll agree with that, with the exception of CoS. Because of all the invisible glyphs, it can be used pretty often for finding those.
Use cases from modules aside does it make sense to say that Perception helps you notice things, but won't help you decipher what they mean while Investigation won't help you physically notice anything, but will help you decipher meaning from things you do notice?
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
To the OP, I'll say that I run into the perception vs investigation issue the most when I'm trying to figure it out "on the fly" in an underdeveloped area. Using the secret door example (not to beat a dead horse, but might as well stick with it), determining which one to use depends on how well you designed the area it's in. Say you have a room that had a secret door. If that's as far as you got in your design when creating the area, you're going to have to guess which one to use, probably perception, but it's a toss up. But, if you designed that room with a bookcase in front of it, it's investigation. However, that's only if the door never gets used. (For example, the new tenants of that room moved in, never noticed the door, and put the bookcase there.) On the other hand, let's say there are no "new" tenants, and the bookcase has been moved back and forth to gain access to the door. In that instance, there might be scratches on the floor, less dust in certain areas, etc that would prompt a perception to notice that the bookcase gets moved from time to time. This would lead the PCs to moving it and searching behind it.
If you don't plan out your areas/ things to find in that sort of detail, you will constantly be "flip-flopping" between perception and investigation. Always tell yourself when designing something "OK, I've put something to find here... how can my players find it?"
Use cases from modules aside does it make sense to say that Perception helps you notice things, but won't help you decipher what they mean while Investigation won't help you physically notice anything, but will help you decipher meaning from things you do notice?
Yes, for the most part, but the trouble between the two is that investigation does get used to "find" things. Perception won't let you see a hidden compartment in the third drawer of a desk, a PC would need to investigate it to find that. But to your point, just seeing (perceiving) knocked over objects in a room won't necessarily let a PC deduce that a fight happened in the room. (Investigation would let them add up all the clues, like scuff marks on the floor, a cut in the chair from a wide swing, etc) It's that weird crossover on finding things that can throw the two skills for a loop.
Yes, for the most part, but the trouble between the two is that investigation does get used to "find" things. Perception won't let you see a hidden compartment in the third drawer of a desk, a PC would need to investigate it to find that. But to your point, just seeing (perceiving) knocked over objects in a room won't necessarily let a PC deduce that a fight happened in the room. (Investigation would let them add up all the clues, like scuff marks on the floor, a cut in the chair from a wide swing, etc) It's that weird crossover on finding things that can throw the two skills for a loop.
I would let a good Perception check notice that one drawer is different from the others somehow, but not necessarily that it has a hidden compartment. This also depends o the character actually inspecting the desk.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Yes, for the most part, but the trouble between the two is that investigation does get used to "find" things. Perception won't let you see a hidden compartment in the third drawer of a desk, a PC would need to investigate it to find that. But to your point, just seeing (perceiving) knocked over objects in a room won't necessarily let a PC deduce that a fight happened in the room. (Investigation would let them add up all the clues, like scuff marks on the floor, a cut in the chair from a wide swing, etc) It's that weird crossover on finding things that can throw the two skills for a loop.
I would let a good Perception check notice that one drawer is different from the others somehow, but not necessarily that it has a hidden compartment. This also depends o the character actually inspecting the desk.
Unless one of my characters had x-ray vision, I wouldn't let them find a compartment hidden inside a drawer unless they opened the drawer. The physical interaction of opening it is what flips it from perception to investigation for me. (And for sake of clarity, I am thinking of something like a false bottom on the inside of the drawer... the fronts of the drawers all look identical.)
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I cannot imagine this is a unique post but I'm just banging my head getting the fundamentals correct for when to make the players roll for Perception or Investigation checks.
I've read Players and DMG multiple times on Wisdom vs. Intelligence. I've checked out videos on this topic but what I've seen pretty much regurgitate Players or DMG. It's just not clear to me what the trigger would be either from a player's standpoint to a situation I can deduce which proper ability check to make.
I'm just not consistent and as the DM I want to be consistent on what check, the proper check, I'm asking my players to do and not have them confused asking "But last time with situation X you had us roll Perception but new in a similar Situation Y you want Investigation???"
So I'm looking for some help or feedback on to you make the determination of Perception vs Investigation checks. Again, I've read Players and DMG and it's not getting through to me, by no fault of the books, it just me who trying to get more concrete examples or understanding how to properly identify and request the proper skill check.
Yes, DM Experience is key and I'm sure it will all come to me during game session 42 but my compulsion to get the rules right is compelling me that I'm not getting it and I need some DM assistance.
I use Passive Perception to determine if a character "happens to notice" something as they go about their business. Example, if a character is walking down a hallway, I use their Passive Perception to see if they notice the trap.
Along the same lines, if the character asks, "Do I notice anything?" I ask for a Perception roll. Example, the character is walking down the hallway and says, "I'm keeping an eye out for traps", I ask for a Perception roll to see if the spot the trap.
If the character says, "I'm looking for...", then I ask for Investigation roll. Example, the character is walking down the hallway and says, "I'm searching for traps", I ask for Investigation roll to see if they find the trap.
In general I use Perception as "oh! I spotted/heard something!" and Investigation as "Aha! Found it!"
There’s actually a pretty big... 60+ post thread. Chronically detailing our perception vs investigation. Passively. Actively. How it’s RAW, how people home brew it, etc.
i recommend checking out that thread.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/dungeons-dragons-discussion/rules-game-mechanics/35377-passive-perception-and-passive-investigation
Watch me on twitch
This is not entirely correct.
perception = general.
investigation = specific.
thats how it all boils down in the end.
the searching for traps would be investigation. Keeping an eye out for traps. Also investigation.
”keeping an eye out for anything weird” perception. Then, with that perception, you might notice arrow holes in one wall, dried blood on the floor etc, which leads you to believe there is a trap.
perception doesn’t find a secret door. Perception finds walls where air comes through, or you can see light, or that sound different when you knock on them, etc. and then Investigation determines its a secret door and not just the work of a bad carpenter/construction worker/mason.
Watch me on twitch
2 things. First is something I think that goes overlooked. If you open up a character sheet on dndbeyond and go to your skill list, click on a skill and it gives good detailed explanation of each skill.
second, here is how I determine the difference between the two.
Investigation is getting up close and personal, searching a sock drawer, reaching into a hole in a wall, looking through books on a shelf, looting a dead body, going through papers on a desk.
perception is a test of the senses. - As you bite into the pie, make a perception check...you get a little taste of iron. - Can I hear anyone on the other side of the door? Make a perception check. - You see several shadowy figures moving through the fog, make a perception check. They appear humanoid in nature but you catch a glimpse of two red glowing eyes quickly look in your direction.
The confusion is not just you.
I believe that it's been nigh impossible for people to figure out how these are intended to be used, based on RAW, because RAW itself uses them inconsistently, and the skill checks called for in published modules just make the issue worse.
You are probably better off figuring out what specific cases it makes sense to use each skill in your game, use those, and use them consistently. In the end, so long as the rules are reasonable, agreed upon, known to everyone, give you results you want, and are consistent - you're good.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
According to the DMG it does:
"Detecting a Secret Door. Use the characters’ passive Wisdom (Perception) scores to determine whether anyone in the party notices a secret door without actively searching for it. Characters can also find a secret door by actively searching the location where the door is hidden and succeeding on a Wisdom (Perception) check."
“perception <edit> *shouldn’t* find a secret door”
hows that for you then?
cause, to Vedexent’s point. There’s inconsistencies between modules, PhB, DMG, and SA, regarding what it does and does not do for perception and investigation both.
in general I find it best and most understandable to keep it simple:
perception is general
investigation is specific
otherwise, you end up invalidating one for the other at some point.
much like when people misuse acrobatics in athletics situations.
example from PhB:
Perception. Your Wisdom (Perception) check lets you spot, hear, or otherwise detect the presence of something. It measures your general awareness of your surroundings and the keenness of your Senses. For example, you might try to hear a conversation through a closed door, eavesdrop under an open window, or hear Monsters moving stealthily in the Forest. Or you might try to spot things that are obscured or easy to miss, whether they are orcs lying in Ambushon a road, thugs Hiding in the shadows of an alley, or candlelight under a closed Secret door.
you don’t see the secret door. You see the candlelight under it.
Watch me on twitch
This is the way I run it and makes the most sense to me:
Perception is your physical senses, how sharp your sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch are. Perception checks will provide physical details, but will not tell you what anything means, that will depend on whether or not you've perceived something similar before or if you have some other knowledge. High perception characters have honed and sharpened senses.
Investigation is your mental ability to deduce information from clues. It does not help you physically notice anything, but once you do notice something Investigation will help you work out what something is, how something works, or if there is a hidden meaning behind something. This is also why it is used in research rolls, because it helps you glean meaning from various sources and put together a coherent and holistic picture of the information. It is also the skill to Sherlock Holmes a crime scene and figure out what happened. This might make it overlap just a little with Survival in that it helps you track someone, but I wouldn't think it would allow the same kind of speed.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
So perception will let you notice a seam in the wall, a wire hidden in the mechanism of a doorknob, and the differences in the patterns in the background of a painting, but Investigation will tell you that it's a hidden door, a poison dart trap, or a hidden code implanted by the painter.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I've heard tons of people say that official adventures and the rules are inconsistent with finding secret doors. (I'm just going to focus on this one aspect of the perception vs investigation debate for simplicity.) But here's the thing... they ARE consistent. If you have the app and own all the books, feel free to deny this, but it's pretty easy to find every instance of "secret door" like I just did. There is ONE instance of using investigation to find a secret door, and it is included as an additional way to find a secret door that is already called out as a perception find. (HoDQ, Hunting Lodge, allows to find the door when investigating the tapestries closely in addition to the perception to find it) There are secret doors that can only be found by performing other steps. A magic map is needed in OotA, for one, but there are only 3 instances of this type thing across all the official adventures.
There is, in fact, a situation where candlelight is seen under a secret door in CoS. Because of that candlelight, it says no perception roll is needed to find it. The characters just see it straight up, as is appropriate. The "candlelight under the door" example from the skill description is a flavor description to help understand how it might be seen. I don't see that as an "inconsistency" because it's more for helping a player understand how skills interact with the world, whereas the DMG and all the modules are for laying out the rules for the DM. (And I realize that adventures aren't rulebooks, but I look to them for consistencies if I need to.)
I know this doesn't necessarily address the original question, but there are consistencies in how the two skills are used in the 5e official content if you actually look. (Btw, the same applies to traps, as I had previously searched every instance of spotting traps for a passive perception thread.)
Secret doors are only one use case. I'm not saying there aren't use cases where the skills are used consistently. I'm saying that the Character skills are not used consistently over all use cases. In some cases they seem to "mean" one thing, and "mean" other things in other cases.
This extends to Ability scores as well.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
Based on published examples, investigation is almost useless, so it may be preferable to just come up with your own house rules for what it means. A decent rule of thumb would be "Could a dog figure this out?". If the answer is 'yes', it's perception, 'no', it's investigation.
In the case of a secret door, that sounds like perception to know the door is there, but investigation to figure out how to open it.
Secret doors are just one example (as I said) but the same thing applies to traps and other "things to find". I was sticking to investigation and perception vs skills overall per the OP's request of concrete examples. The DMG states the rules for the most common uses of these two skills, the adventures give uses of those skills in practice. They are pretty universal in that perception=spotting a trap or door, with a follow-up investigation roll to find out how to disarm/open it. Secret compartment in a wall? Perception. Secret compartment in a desk? Investigation. Secret compartment behind a painting? Investigation. (All examples from published adventures, all consistent with the DMG.)
I'll agree with that, with the exception of CoS. Because of all the invisible glyphs, it can be used pretty often for finding those.
Use cases from modules aside does it make sense to say that Perception helps you notice things, but won't help you decipher what they mean while Investigation won't help you physically notice anything, but will help you decipher meaning from things you do notice?
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
To the OP, I'll say that I run into the perception vs investigation issue the most when I'm trying to figure it out "on the fly" in an underdeveloped area. Using the secret door example (not to beat a dead horse, but might as well stick with it), determining which one to use depends on how well you designed the area it's in. Say you have a room that had a secret door. If that's as far as you got in your design when creating the area, you're going to have to guess which one to use, probably perception, but it's a toss up. But, if you designed that room with a bookcase in front of it, it's investigation. However, that's only if the door never gets used. (For example, the new tenants of that room moved in, never noticed the door, and put the bookcase there.) On the other hand, let's say there are no "new" tenants, and the bookcase has been moved back and forth to gain access to the door. In that instance, there might be scratches on the floor, less dust in certain areas, etc that would prompt a perception to notice that the bookcase gets moved from time to time. This would lead the PCs to moving it and searching behind it.
If you don't plan out your areas/ things to find in that sort of detail, you will constantly be "flip-flopping" between perception and investigation. Always tell yourself when designing something "OK, I've put something to find here... how can my players find it?"
Yes, for the most part, but the trouble between the two is that investigation does get used to "find" things. Perception won't let you see a hidden compartment in the third drawer of a desk, a PC would need to investigate it to find that. But to your point, just seeing (perceiving) knocked over objects in a room won't necessarily let a PC deduce that a fight happened in the room. (Investigation would let them add up all the clues, like scuff marks on the floor, a cut in the chair from a wide swing, etc) It's that weird crossover on finding things that can throw the two skills for a loop.
I would let a good Perception check notice that one drawer is different from the others somehow, but not necessarily that it has a hidden compartment. This also depends o the character actually inspecting the desk.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Unless one of my characters had x-ray vision, I wouldn't let them find a compartment hidden inside a drawer unless they opened the drawer. The physical interaction of opening it is what flips it from perception to investigation for me. (And for sake of clarity, I am thinking of something like a false bottom on the inside of the drawer... the fronts of the drawers all look identical.)